


Quicken The Cut

by hikash0



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Blood, Credence loves and protects his siblings at great personal cost, Denial, Gen, Physical Abuse, learned helplessness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-02-23 12:30:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13190136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikash0/pseuds/hikash0
Summary: Credence looks forward to his monthly haircut.





	Quicken The Cut

**Author's Note:**

> This work is an exploration of the painful but very real phenomenon of loving and craving the acceptance of an abusive parent despite what they put you through. Also how learned helplessness and surviving abuse takes different forms in different people. 
> 
> On the subject of Chastity, I'm not a fan of the canon take that she's fine with what happens to Credence and eagerly on board with the fanaticism of the Second Salemers. Siblings under an abusive roof can have drastically different trauma responses. I think it's pretty likely that Chastity is trying to survive Mary Lou the best way she knows how, by being a 'perfect child' while Credence has been placed into the 'scapegoat' position.

If there is a single moment in time that Credence looks forward to, one slot of time out of one day out of every month in which he is more or less calm and certain he is making no mistakes, it is the time for his monthly haircut.

It's just one of many rituals performed and enforced in the Barebone house and another act of charity for the local orphans. It goes hand in hand with the weekly bible study, the daily sermons, the endless piles of fliers.

His Ma likes to keep the sides of Credence’s hair shorn so very short. It’s always overgrown by the time he’s due, and it is so merciful that she chose this hair for him. It must mean something, surely, Credence reassures himself. It’s an intentional choice, so that she can show casual love without fanning the flames of Credences' vanity. He is so vain after all, and needy. He should have outgrown it, there’s been plenty of time. Twenty-four years in fact. But he’s not good, he’s not fast and he still wants to cling to her skirts just the same as when he was a boy.

It’s such a precious time for Credence.

The one time, the precious one time a month that she actually touches him, gently and not for something he did wrong.

Credence knows his heart is beating too loud, if she hears it she will think him sickly and send him away. But really it is just because she never so much as places a hand on his shoulder in temperance, so Credence isn’t used to it. Really even the brush of a stranger’s hand touching his when he passes off leaflets is enough to send his heart thundering into his throat.

But when she cuts his hair...

When she cuts his hair she is near him and she is no stranger, she is his Ma. Her hands are dry, they are warm and gentle against the nape of his neck and he re-lives them brushing his forehead and tucking him in to sleep at a point in time so very distant from all of this.

He remembers how once they cupped his face and she smiled a real smile at him.

He is sat still and straight-backed in the pew. They certainly don’t have the money to buy proper barbers chairs, and Ma always said idle time was bible time. He clasps his hands and closes his eyes, keeps his shoulders and neck perfectly straight, and prays.

He picks a verse he thinks Ma will like, one about purging sin, about angels coming to devastate and save them all.

The bowl she uses to keep a straight line is the same that is passed around to collect donations. He thinks of it turning over and of copper and silver coins raining down, like a halo around him. He wants to smile at it but he does not. By now his breathing has finally settled to a normal paced rise and fall, rise and fall. He keeps the rhythm and calms himself as Ma’s hands work. Getting too excited over touch isn’t good.

He thinks of his haircut like a penance before God. It isn’t in fashion and he sees the looks it garners him from strangers and the children alike, but his Ma gave it to him and so it is good and it is holy. It is a show of her love, the way God trials those He loves.

He has scars too. Bald patches where hair no longer grows, nestled between the junction where the bottom of his skull meets his neck.

Places where his Ma’s hand has slipped or skidded and the straight blade has scraped into his skin. Credence doesn’t mind, it is even something he secretly cherishes. It is a revelation that his Ma is human too and makes human mistakes. For surely that is what they are.

Surely.

Like clockwork it comes, the sting of skin sundered from his nape. Credence tightens his hand into a fist, but he doesn’t dwell on it. This doesn’t hurt inside his heart the way the other pains do. This is an accident.

Ma always puts ointment and plasters on the cuts anyway. Credence knows she won’t say, but it’s her way of apologizing.

He’s gone first so he can take the time to sweep the floor between each child’s turn. He feels refreshed, for once, clean. He stands a little straighter, holding the broom as he collects his own shorn locks into a pile. They burn the hair afterwards. It smells something awful but his Ma says that witches can steal your face with only a single piece of you.

After Credence, the line of children is decided by age, as the youngest ones still have a hard time staying still. They aren’t waiting in an actual line, but are sat in pews and told to study their lessons. Chastity has free reign and she weaves up and down the aisles, keeping order.

Credence likes to check up on the children out of the corner of his eye, he makes a note of two who’s jackets will need to be padded before the true East Coast winter rolls in, and one girl who’s oxfords are wearing down to the socks. He’ll have to cash his stash of glass bottles sooner than he thought. He laments it a bit, he had wanted to get Modesty something special for Christmas, but shoes for the other child, Frieda is her name, they are a necessity.

The girls haircuts are simple, just an inch off the end, all the same length. Ma checks for lice too, brushing through the strands at the scalp with a sharp black comb. The boys cuts are more interesting to watch. They don’t all get the bowl, though some do. Ma always leaves it a bit longer on the top and gradually fades the hair until it blends into skin. She does it so carefully, so precisely, it’s mesmerizing to watch. Credence thinks he would like to learn how to cut hair too someday. The idea of being able to take such care and be given such trust is almost overwhelming. Never mind. He’d probably be awful at it. He’d probably have an accident like Ma, only worse. He’d probably hurt whoever’s head he was touching.

As the line of boys goes on, Credence makes note of the different types of hair, the different textures and tones. It’s so fascinating how the hair grows in all sorts of directions, especially the cowlicks, the way they grow from the base of the neck. Bennet’s hairline is straight across, while Avery’s has three peaks, one on either side and one in the middle, aligning with his spine. Francis’ hair is dark, corse, tightly wound, and emerges natural, in little whorls uninterrupted up his scalp like the spread of flowers along grass.

It is with that thought of the uninterrupted growth pattern that Credence notices, for the first time that…neither Avery, nor Bennet, nor Francis…have any scars.

Neither David, nor Michael, not Patience or Rafael, not Paul nor Joseph—

Credence grips the broom tight in his hands and watches the constant procession of boys. Watches Ma’s hands work deftly and with surety, not a tremor in her grip. Smooth and confident, departing hair from skin without nicking one bit of flesh.

He scrutinizes the next two boys, rifles frantically through his memory of every haircut he has ever observed, for some instance to prove him wrong.

There are none.

His palms hurt, tight grip aggravating itching scabs. His knuckles turn white and he stares at the unblemished napes of so many of his ‘brothers’ with a smooth coiling sick slowly, slowly, gathering inside of him. Copper in his mouth, bile and devastation thick in his throat. He can’t swallow around it. It rises up to his nose and he can’t draw air.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

He reaches up around the back of his neck and brushes at the plasters there. He presses his fingertips into wounded skin, he—

“Credence?”

Chastity is next to him, he looks down at her with a start.

"Oh. I…I’m going to go get the burner started. Heated,” he manages. Then he flees.

He leans the broom deftly against the side of a pew bench. He ducks his head, eyes burning, barely feeling the rest of his body as it takes him away from the main church quickly without looking back. He barely makes it out around back to the burner shed before the first sob bursts out of his mouth. It shakes his whole body, and his next breath comes in rasping like a stalling automobile.

He blindly finds a corner between the burner and the bench, on the dirt covered ground, and curls his entire ugly, tall, body into it. He digs his fingers into the back of his neck, pushing down fiercely on the plasters and presses the other palm to his eyes, covering them. There is a persistent, pathetic sound coming from inside of him. It’s his ugliness, his lack, trying to come out. Credence presses his lips together and lets all of his imperfections crash around inside of himself, a muffled wail that reaches only the inside of his ears, that reverberates up the muscles clenched tight in his neck and jaw and behind his eardrums.

Stupid. Naive. Slow.

Dirt crunches to the left of him and he starts badly, smacking the back of his hand against the iron burner. Luckily it is cold.

Chastity stands in the doorway, eyeing him with an unreadable expression.

Credence wipes his sleeve across his face franticly, his right hand throbs. His left hand comes away from the plasters with tacky blood on his fingertips. He’s not to cry. He’s a man. If Chastity tells, he—

He stands, but does not look at her, he leans as close to the wall of the shed as he can, as if it will swallow him whole and save him from this humiliation of his own making. His right hand is limp at his side, the bruised bone screaming from under his too-thin skin.

She steps towards him, still ever quiet. She reaches into her pocket and he recoils. He’s so pathetic. She’s his little sister for God’s sake.

She pauses, holds up one hand to him, a placating gesture. She moves slower, continuing to pull whatever it is out of her pocket.

“You forgot the flint kit,”

She holds out a smooth rectangular tin. The green paint on it is faded and the edges are dented soft. Apart from her personal box, the one she keeps on her always, Ma doesn’t store matches in the burn shed, or in the church. Too many children inclined to play with fire. Starting a flame with flint takes at least a little bit of learned skill. Credence still hangs on to the ounce of praise Ma had given for his quickness with fire.

If Credence looks closely he can see that Chastity’s hand is set with tremors. They are very fine, but Credence has long since learned to recognize the signs of her distress. He relaxes, she’s come to help him.

They were close once. And this is a product of that closeness. There is uneasiness between them now, and guilt in every line of Chastity’s body. She knows that she is the favorite, spared their mother’s worst. While Credence serves as a constant reminder of just how much grace she stands to lose.

He straightens up and takes the flint tin from her. He murmurs a thank you and brushes a thumb over the back of her still trembling hand, hoping that the pucker of his scabs and scars do not ruin the comfort he hopes to convey. He’s about to turn away and actually light the burner when they are interrupted.

“What’s this?"

Chastity's face blanches, the tendons in her neck stand out and her jaw locks. She schools her face into a neutral expression not more than a second later. She was always so much better at it than Credence. At control, at neutrality, at feigned calm. She survived better for it. Credence knows how fast and loud her heart can beat, how she used to stop breathing when the panic set in. She looks to him. For all her pretending to be so strong Credence knows she’s just as scared and damned as he is. In that moment his own fear is buffered by something else, something bigger than himself.

“Mama, Credence was just—“

“I was hiding,”

Chastity’s eyes widen and she looks at him as if to ask ‘what are you doing!’

“No, listen, I was only bringing him the—"

Ma makes an aborted motion with her hand and Chastity’s voice cuts out, like a candle snuffed.

Ma stands in the doorway, an immovable object. The door might as well be shut behind her for all that Credence fathoms escaping this.

“I was hiding,” he repeats, steadying himself and preparing for the cost of his next words. “Because I...hate the haircuts you give,”

He see’s the blue of Ma’s eyes float in the widening white. He has the urge to grab them and keep them still, to stop their inevitable shift towards Chastity.

“Chastity, you conspire with him?”

Ma’s voice is soft and genuinely inquisitive. Chastity’s skin looks waxy from how pale she has just become. Her expression however, gives nothing away.

“No Mama, I didn't know. I was bringing Credence the flint kit. To light the burner, he forgot it,”

“He forgot it,” Ma echoes. Chastity’s eyes flick to his, panic and apology in them so well hidden that only Credence could ever pick up on it.

Ma moves towards Chastity and Credence marvels at how still she is, where he would have surely jerked away.

"Chastity, what do we say about forgetting?"

She swallows a few times before answering. She does not look at Credence. He is glad, it will make it easier.

"There is no forgetting, no true carelessness. There is only true intent, hidden behind excuses and lies,"

"Very good, perfect,”

He watches her breathe easy the moment Ma looks away.

“Leave us. Make sure the children are practicing their lessons,”

“Yes Mama,”

And just like that she ducks out, she is safe. Credence almost smiles from the sick relief of it all.

He reaches for the buckle of his belt and a strange calm overtakes him because he knows this, he know what is expected and exactly what to do. There is no risk of error and there is always a terminal point. How funny that he is calmer here than twenty minutes ago with a razor to his nape.

It is always like leaving his body, and yet being tethered to it at every point. There is so much disconnect and so much in the way of numbness, while all of the feeling remains so forcibly churning under his skin. Of course, there is pain and of course his palms bleed, but the worst of it all is the evidence of the fact that Credence is flawed. That he is unloved. That all of it is justified because all of the others manage to keep the course and Credence wonders why, why, why he is the way that makes Ma do this. Because this time there are no bandages or plaster, and she does not send him away to his room or to the street. She keeps him posted between the pews to sweep the hair into piles as the day progresses, and by the time they burn it all in the foul incinerator, the handle of the broom is painted red as the fire.

Weeks later, Credence digs through dumpsters surrounding Pike Street until nightfall, and comes out with seven shining glass bottles. If he’s lucky they’ll be redeemable for a penny each. Three more to go for a decent meal, three hundred and forty three to make up for the oxfords he didn’t buy Frieda. He doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind after all, it was worth it to see Chastity really smile for once. The tiny model plane is hidden in a box under a floorboard beneath her bed but he rarely sleeps and is able to hear the careful creak of nails being pried away in the dead of the night.

That alone is enough.


End file.
